Famous athletes, singers, and movie stars always attract young people. For example, whenever an outstanding basketball athlete scores a point or performs excellently, the fans and spectators around the court would cheer loudly and continuously. Similarly, in a big-scaled music performance, when the colorful lights change along with the signers' beautiful sound, the audience is intoxicated, shouts with joy, and waves all kinds of cheering devices to encourage the singers.
Due to the large number of fans, there is an amazing potential market for different cheering devices, such as cheering sticks, fluorescent sticks, fluorescent badges, electroluminescent (EL) cold light products, horns, whistles, EL light strips, and various kinds of novel luminous products. These products are constantly developed or improved, and introduced into the market.
Among others, the conventional glow stick is small in volume, easy to carry, and convenient to use, and therefore becomes the most welcomed cheering device in almost all the big-scaled meetings or events. When the glow stick is bent lightly, an inner tube thereof is broken, and two initially isolated substances are combined to produce light and create a unique visual effect and wonderful environmental atmosphere. However, the glow stick each can produce only one single color light which lasts for about 48 hours, and is a single-use product. It should be noted that some of the chemical substances being filled in the glow stick might cause cancer. In the event these chemical substances leak from the glow stick and are inhaled or touched by users, conditions unfavorable to human health, such as vomiting, nausea, dizziness, palsy, or even coma might appear. Therefore, the conventional glow stick has potential danger and is not recyclable to cause problems in environmental protection.
An electric light stick is a new generation of the glow sticks for use safely. As one example, Taiwanese Patent Publication No. 590042 discloses an improved glow stick that includes an ultraviolet fluorescent lamp and a set of fluorescent sleeves coated with a long-acting fluorescent agent and a fluorescent material. Light having a special wavelength emitted from the fluorescent lamp causes photoluminescence of the fluorescent sleeves. Meanwhile, due to the long-acting fluorescent agent, the photoluminescence of the fluorescent sleeves can extend for a long period of time even if the fluorescent lamp is turned off. Therefore, the electronic light stick has the advantages of having low power consumption, being repeatedly usable, and being environment-friendly without causing pollution.
There are still many differently designed light sticks employing light-emitting diode (LED) or cold light. Examples are seen in Chinese Patent Publication Nos. CN 2137554Y entitled Entertaining Spinning Stick, CN2506854Y entitled Light Stick, and CN 2790553Y entitled Musical and Luminescent Toy Magic Stick. These structures are internally provided with batteries and repeatedly usable, and are characterized by colorful flashing light emission.
However, all the above-listed conventional electronic light sticks have a fixed volume to be either too short or too long for use. To enable convenient carrying, the conventional light sticks usually have a short outer case and limited luminescent area, and are accordingly, not so useful in creating a joyful atmosphere. On the other hand, for the light sticks to be more eye-catching, they must have an increased length to provide increased luminescent area, and have more complicated circuit design to produce colorful lights. The lengthened light sticks have increased volume and could not be conveniently carried or stored.
It is therefore tried by the inventor to develop an inflatable light stick to overcome the problems existed in the conventional glow sticks.